


Mnemonics

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Gen Fic, POV Female Character, Painting, Supernatural Elements, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-07
Updated: 2010-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:17:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Painting mandalas has never seemed like anything meaningful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mnemonics

**Author's Note:**

> For the Kara Gen Ficathon, prompt "painting"

“Circles!” she declared to the classroom as she spread the splash of blue that had landed on her paper around and around and around.

“No, Kara, we’re painting houses today,” her preschool teacher said in soft, slow tone.

“My house is circles,” Kara retorted, and dipped her other small hand into the red. She only had two, and now they were both wet, so she didn’t know what she was going to do once she had to add the yellow. Because she’d have to add yellow.

She didn’t hear her teacher sigh as Kara pushed the paint in a wide path around the blue dot, tongue tucked in the corner of her mouth and eyes focused.

***

“Don’t you think that’s a little simplistic for the assignment, Kara? This is Oil Painting 205, not high-school.”

Kara didn’t look up at her professor, just used the back of her hand to brush a loose strand of hair out of her face, not caring if she got a streak of yellow paint on her forehead. “Well, you know, more than one of those old philosophers on the reading list said that the circle was the most perfect of shapes, so...”

She could almost hear the professor start. “I didn’t realize you were paying attention.”

Kara ignored him as he walked on. She hadn’t been listening, but she’d heard it somewhere and remembered. Any excuse to get the teachers and their “sophisticated” notions off her back so she could just _paint_. She frowned, nudging the edge of the inner circle, hoping it didn’t start to bleed. The edges had to be clean.

She didn’t really care why circles were appealing, she just wanted to paint them.

***

Zak stood staring at her wall, making audible hums at intervals.

“Trying to fall asleep?”

“No, then I’d be watching the game.”

Kara grinned. “This season _has_ sucked.”

“Okay, so I get the poem, but what’s with the mandala?”

He hadn’t heard her. Kara walked over, stood next to him with arms crossed. “Mandala?”

“Primary colors mask it, yeah, but I remember the design from those classes that my mom dragged me to, with that droning priest.” He tipped his head in her direction, eyes still focused on the broad paint swatches on the wall.

“It’s not religious.”

He raised an eyebrow, but she was lost in the painting and didn’t explain. She prayed to the gods but never for inspiration. Wherever that came from, she didn’t ask herself.

***

There just wasn’t enough space on the Galactica anymore.

Kara didn’t ask for breathing room (pointless), but she’d bring over her cigar box and run through the contents.

Sometimes, she’d sit with the pictures of her old apartment and run her thumb around the design she’d painted over and over, until an hour had gone by and she hadn’t noticed.

She’d forget as soon as it was put away, but it helped a little.

***

Her first paintings on New Caprica screamed of doubts and frustrations and worries and chaos. But when each was done, when she stepped back and rubbed absently at her forehead, she could breathe out and leave all those things in the paint. As soon as they dried, each canvas was placed out of the way.

It was over half a year before her fingers slowed, calmed, taking each stroke out wide and around without a purpose, until suddenly it connected in a circle and she realized it was blue. After that, she didn’t have to think about what came next.

That painting sat with the rest of them, but it didn’t scream of any emotion she recognized.

***

Helo left her alone at last, hands burnt, mind awash with pain medications and the threads of panic. She swallowed. She swallowed again. The foreboding wouldn’t go away.

With only a few things pressing on her life, none of which she wanted to think about, the one that continued popping to the forefront was the one she understood the least. The photos were back in the box, but the matching swirls of paint and metal hung behind her eyelids whenever she closed her eyes.

That unidentified feeling of almost-peace relating to those circles seemed like a disturbing mystery now. She wanted to yell at the universe, _Stop hiding, just tell me what it is._

None of her demands were ever answered.

***  
 _  
You knew the shape of the storm would guide you home, didn’t you? That’s why you put it there._

Kara didn’t know what the voice meant. She didn’t know what this Other Side was.  
 _  
We thought it was too soon, but we were wrong. You needed this. You needed to remember something before you could take the important step.  
_  
All Kara could think of was Earth. Where was it? She needed to find it, right?  
 _  
The end of the journey isn’t where you think it is. But you’ll figure it out. After all you’ve accomplished, how could we not trust in you?  
_  
Kara was in a viper again. Her clock said she’d lost six hours in the storm that looked like one of her paintings, concentric circles of soft colors. It had been a message so quiet she’d already forgotten.

What mattered was the blue and green planet that filled her head. In just a few moments she’d be back in the Fleet. She’d been to Earth. She could take them there.


End file.
